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TDK Corporation has released Tronics GYPRO4300, a high stability and vibration-tolerant digital MEMS gyroscope for dynamic applications.

The GYPRO4300 features a ±300°/s input measurement range, 200 Hz bandwidth, and 1 ms latency with a closed-loop architecture that enables high linearity and stability. The GYPRO4300 has bias instability of 0.5°/h as a typical value and a maximum value of 2°/h.

The GYPRO4300 is suitable for applications such as railways, land vehicles, vertical take-off and landing aircraft and UAVs, marine and subsea systems, borehole drilling and surveying instruments.

The GYPRO4300 is available now for sampling and customer evaluations. Evaluations of the sensors can also be made with an Arduino-based evaluation kit that provides built-in testing functionalities such as output reading and recording, recalibration, and digital self-tests.

The annual European Navigation Conference (ENC23), set for May 31-June 2, will be hosted by the European Space Agency (ESA) at its ESTEC facilities in Noordwijk, The Netherlands. Full papers need to be submitted by May 15.

This year’s conference will focus on resilient navigation. Organized by The Netherlands Institute for Navigation, the conference will address resilience in a broad sense, including navigation sub-functions, operational routines, standards and policies.

The ENC23 tech committee has broken down the overarching theme into a range of topics, including integral end-to-end navigation solutions, specifics in position, navigation and timing, routing, data integrity questions and more.

Registration is open until May 21. For more information, visit the ENC23 website.

Orolia, a Safran Electronics and Defense company, has partnered with Xona Space Systems to develop support for Xona’s low-Earth-orbit (LEO) constellation and navigation signals in its Skydel-powered simulation and testing products.

Xona is developing PULSAR – a high-performance positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) service enabled by a commercial constellation of dedicated LEO satellites.

“Our Skydel GNSS simulation engine will provide support for Xona’s PULSAR signals and satellite constellation to offer OEMs, developers, and integrators a unique tool that enables early testing and validation of Xona’s LEO PNT signal performance,” Pierre-Marie Le Véel, GNSS products director with Safran, said.

The PULSAR service aims to advance PNT security, resilience and accuracy capabilities by augmenting existing GNSS while also operating as an independent PNT constellation.

Skydel powers Safran’s advanced GNSS simulators such as GSG-8.

One GNSS receiver widely used in autonomous ground vehicles is Hexagon | NovAtel’s SMART7 antenna. Matteo Luccio, GPS World’s editor-in-chief, discussed the product and its applications with Haley Lawrance, Senior Positioning Product Manager, Agriculture for Hexagon | NovAtel.

Luccio: “How do you differentiate your SMART antennas from your other GNSS receivers?”

Lawrance: “The reason why the SMART antenna portfolio has been so attractive within the agriculture market and to our autonomy customers specifically, has been the ease of integration and the high performance it provides. GNSS positioning is just one part of an autonomous system, and the autonomous integrators don’t necessarily have the volume of machines out of the gate that would justify the development time for them to integrate the OEM components.

With NovAtel’s SMART antennas, they only need to consider the single cable harness that will run power and communications to and from the receiver – and a single mount point on the vehicle. The SMART antennas offer a waterproof and rugged enclosure, designed to withstand the demanding environments typical for agriculture – and help accelerate our customers’ time to market.”

Luccio: “Is there some standard, as there is for cars, that enables developers of autonomous systems to easily plug your system into theirs?”

Lawrance: “We support a variety of communication protocols – serial, CAN, Ethernet, and Wi-Fi. For autonomy, Ethernet tends to be the most common option for communication with the GNSS receiver – especially when using features that require more bandwidth, such as our SPAN GNSS+INS sensor fusion solution that leverages an inertial measurement unit.

NovAtel’s_OEM7_driver, built for the Robot Operating System (ROS), is a great option because it makes it even quicker for them to integrate and allows the receiver to essentially plug-and-play into the ROS environment with minimal development. For CAN, we support both J1939 Transport and Extended Transport Protocol and NMEA 2000 if they would like to communicate onto an existing bus they are using on the vehicle.”

Luccio: “What about the ease of integration on the software side?”

Lawrance: “We have a very large library of proprietary NovAtel-formatted logs that are available in binary and ASCII, which provide flexibility and allow customers to customize a unique set of logs that provide the data they are interested in. This could be anything from information on which satellites are being used in the solution, to the roll and pitch of the vehicle, or status information from the receiver. NovAtel receivers also output in standard formats, such as NMEA 2000 and NMEA 0183, that consolidate the data that they are most likely to need, such as position, velocity, and quality indicators.”

Luccio: “What markets do your SMART antennas target?”

Lawrance: “Broadly speaking, the SMART antenna product line was designed specifically for agriculture use cases and environments. Customers include agriculture OEMs, aftermarket integrators that develop retrofit precision ag solutions, and autonomous solution providers.
Within that product line, we have SMART7 and SMART2, with different performance options that allows us to scale the best product solution for each application. For high-performance semi-autonomous or autonomous applications that need centimetre-level accuracy – even in highly variable terrain and challenging GNSS-obstructed environments, SMART7 is the best fit – together with SPAN GNSS+INS and TerraStar-C PRO Correction Services or RTK.

For additional positioning redundancy on an autonomous vehicle, SMART2 can be used together with SMART7 – meaning there are two different, independent GNSS hardware, software, and positioning solutions running in parallel. This allows autonomous machinery manufacturers to utilize both positioning solutions in parallel for an additional layer of protection.”

While on public roads self-driving cars are still years away, autonomous systems are already common in much less congested and/or much more controlled environments — such as farm fields, ports, mines, rivers, and in the air — where the risk of a collision causing injuries or fatalities is smaller by orders of magnitude. From unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) taking aerial photographs, to unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) spraying vineyards, to unmanned surface vessels (USV) conducting hydrographic surveys, autonomous or semi-autonomous systems are generally much safer, more efficient, and cheaper to operate than their manned counterparts.

Whether they have wheels, hulls, or wings to properly perform their tasks, autonomous systems need to know — with great accuracy — their position, heading and attitude (roll, pitch, yaw, surge, sway, and heave). For example, to spray grapes in a vineyard, an autonomous system needs to know not only its exact position but also whether it is level or tilted to one side due to uneven terrain, lest it spray the ground or into the air instead of the grapes. Similarly, a survey vessel’s pitch, which depends on its speed through the water, and its roll, due to waves and wind, affect the direction of its sonar beams.

Knowing a platform’s position, heading and attitude requires tight integration of the outputs of GNSS receivers and inertial navigation systems (INS). This enables autonomous systems to compensate for their movements — either physically and in real time, by orienting their sensors or tools, or in software when post-processing the data they collected.

The following three case studies sample current developments in autonomous systems on land, in the air, and on the water.

— Matteo Luccio, Editor-in-Chief

Learn more about the following case studies:

ON LAND
Hexagon | NovAtel: Talking on land with SMART antennas

IN THE AIR
Trimble Applanix: Unmanned aerial vehicles aid survey efforts

ON THE WATER
CHC Navigation: The boat boost

The breakdown of limestone cliffs generates landslides and loose debris that threatens the environment, people and wildlife below. These conditions make it impossible to safely operate traditional survey equipment from the ground for landslide detection. Using UAVs for direct georeferencing is an efficient way to take traditional survey efforts to the sky and enables users to accurately assess land formations while mitigating risk.

One way to implement direct georeferencing on UAV platforms is with the Trimble APX-20 UAV, which is a GNSS-inertial OEM solution that increases the mapping efficiency of small UAVs. It consists of small, low power, precision GNSS and inertial hardware components and POSPac UAV post-mission differential GNSS-inertial office software. The APX-20 UAV eliminates the need for ground control points and reduces the sidelap required to be flown per flight.

The APX-20 UAV contains a precision, survey-grade GNSS receiver and dual inertial measurement units (IMU), so it automatically supports integration on gimballed platforms without requiring an external interface to an autopilot or on a mount. It computes at 100 hz using the embedded IMU while simultaneously logging the raw IMU data from both the internal and external IMU at 200 hz for post-processing in POSPac UAV. The postprocessed position and orientation solutions are suitable for direct georeferencing of cameras, lidars and other sensors.

Trimble Applanix UAV Put to the Test

For fast and safe landslide detection, the Trimble Applanix APX-20 UAV for direct georeferencing was put to the test using a Multirotor M600 manufactured by French company L’Avion Jaune equipped with a VX-20 lidar sensor made by YellowScan, also a French company. This combination produces cost-effective and reliable high-resolution UAV lidar-derived DTMs and 3D models for hazard mitigation and planning.
L’Avion Jaune has performed more than 600 successful mapping missions globally. After pursuing mapping activities with mainly crewed aircraft, it began developing UAVs for long-distance applications for marine, tropical forest and polar regions such as the Multirotor M600/YellowScan VX-20, which offers high-precision, cost-effective and efficient aerial mapping.

The APX-20 UAV and the M600/YellowScan VX-20 were combined and deployed to evaluate landslide activities in France. The mission parameters for this configuration included: high point density; x, y, z precision of 5 cm; access to dangerous zones; map generation under dense vegetation area, and fast deployment. The goal of this project was to enable the implementation of safety and prevention plans for the protection of pedestrians, infrastructure, wildlife and more.

During the six-hour duration of the project, the APX-20 UAV and M600/YellowScan VX-20 configuration was flown four times for 15 minutes each during sunrise. It flew more than 75 ha in surface area with a flight speed of 5 m/s at 60 m in the air, following the topography. Checkpoints were surveyed with differential GPS following the conclusion of the flights. Data processing included computation of the georeferenced trajectory, matching flight lines and point cloud classification, which took two days.

The Results

The flexible UAV deployment of resources enabled the acquisition of dense point clouds and the generation of DTM in less than three days. During this project L’Avion Jaune was able to optimize the choice of material and discover the best practices to collect and process lidar data for mapping in dense vegetation.

Time (and costs) saved using unmanned surface vessels (USV) over conventional methods for hydrography can be dramatic — especially in autonomous mode. Numerous firms, large and small, have discovered how modest investments in such craft can completely revolutionize their hydrographic operations. One such firm is the family owned and operated Coastal Geomatics in North Carolina.

“With conventional methods, it used to take us four weeks with a three- or four-person crew to do the bathymetry for 26 canals that we do every two years for the City of Holden Beach,” Chris Stanley, owner and manager of Coastal Geomatics, said. “Now, with our Apache we do this over four days of high tide; about four to five hours per day.”

Stanley had been surveying in the local area for more than 30 years and had partnered in several local firms. In 2020, he decided to start his own firm, together with his two adult sons Alan and Ian: Coastal Geomatics was born.

“We do a lot of boundary work, and topographic surveys as there is a lot of construction going on in the area,” Alan said. “We also do flood insurance work, FEMA elevation certificates, and hydrographic work — we are on the coast.” Holden Beach is on one of North Carolina’s barrier islands, separated from the mainland by the Intercoastal Waterway. Coastal Geomatics has standing contracts to do hydro work for FEMA beach erosion annually, and the biennial canal surveys for the city.

The move to a USV for hydrographic surveys made a lot of sense, however a past bad experience with the technology prompted Stanley to be extra diligent in choosing a boat. At one firm for which the elder Stanley had worked in the past, they had acquired a USV that he said was essentially “a jet ski, with a mix of components cobbled together.” He added that they had never really gotten it to work right, and it now sits idle in a storage unit.

The Stanleys did some research on the current state of small USV, noting that some still seem like “contraptions” and decided instead to test out three models from CHC Navigation: the Apache 3, 4, and 6. They had considered the tri-hulled Apache 6 for some offshore work they sometimes do, however, they chose the Apache 4 for now. It has a dual GNSS antennas for position and heading that is tightly coupled with an IMU for uninterrupted positions, a single beam echo sounder, and a 360° camera. It has a sensor well that can accommodate most of the popular models of acoustic doppler current profilers (ADCP), though Coastal Geomatics is not presently using an ADCP. It can be run fully autonomously for missions defined in the AutoPlanner software, or remotely piloted — Coastal Geomatics needed both options. They noted how the boat is compact, easy to operate, and all components are well integrated with watertight seals.

For open water areas of their contracted surveys, they put the USV in full autonomous mode, where they say it is quite efficient. However, there are specific tasks where a remote pilot needs to take over.

The canals surveyed for the city to inform dredging operations are about 100 feet wide and each house has a floating dock. There is a 20- to 30-foot strip between the docks. The old method, Ian explained, was to put one of the crew in a small flat bottomed Jon boat, with a crew member on each side of the canal, often with a fourth using a total station. Points across the canal from bulkhead to bulkhead were taken with a long prism pole, handing the pole off to the crew member on the other side after each crossing. The dynamics of which residents’ boats might be at the docks on any given day made full autonomy for that phase of the surveys impractical.

Coastal Geomatics’ solution was to employ a peddle-powered kayak, guiding the Apache remotely. The flexibility of their new craft has enabled the firm to execute multiple types of surveys and expand their hydrographic services more efficiently.

CNH Industrial has entered an agreement to acquire Hemisphere GNSS, a manufacturer of high-performance satellite positioning technology owned by Unistrong. The $175 million acquisition aims to advance automated and autonomous solutions from CNH Industrial for agriculture and construction applications.

Hemisphere GNSS technology will be integrated into CNH Industrial’s products and services providing users with suitable solutions in the field and on job sites.

Hemisphere GNSS’ core technology capabilities include application-specific integrated circuit chips, circuit boards, radio frequency signal processing, navigation algorithms, and satellite-based correction designs. The company’s proprietary GNSS solutions provide accuracy for the agriculture, constructions, mining and marine industries.

The Resilient Missile Warning, Missile Tracking, and Missile Defense Acquisition Delta of the U.S. Space Force’s Space Systems Command (SSC) has released a request for information (RFI) seeking industry inputs for the next Epoch of medium-Earth-orbit missile warning and tracking (MW/MT) satellites. Responses from industry are requested by no later than May 16.

A continuation of the Missile Track Custody (MTC) Program, Epoch 2 is the second increment of capability-based, phased deliveries that leverage a mature foundation of space system technology — which allows for the insertion of new technology. Resilient MW/MT Epoch 2 satellites and associated ground systems will provide next-generation overhead persistent infrared solutions to defeat advanced missile threats.

The RFI solicits feedback from industry on the Epoch 2 acquisition strategy and technical approach for a multi-plane space segment, integrated ground segment and constellation-level systems operations.

Epoch 2 will emphasize the maturation of MW/MT sensors, optical cross-links, data fusion, constellation mission management and robust ground communications.

For more information on receiving the full Epoch 2 RFI can be found on the SAM.gov website linked here.

Bluesky International and SkyFi have collaborated to provide access to Earth observation assets and multi-perspective imagery to users globally. Bluesky is providing its high-resolution aerial imagery, taken by aircraft-mounted cameras, to SkyFi to make available for businesses, forestry, water and land managers across the United Kingdom.

SkyFi aims to make Earth observation data more accessible to users through its growing network of satellites and aerial platforms. The company has created a data marketplace where users can purchase existing images or task a satellite to purchase a new image.

Bluesky provides a wide range of geospatial data products and services to users across the United Kingdom. GIS and CAD-ready imagery from Bluesky captures ground terrain, cityscape rooftops, fauna and more. The company’s catalogue of aerial imagery is available in England, Scotland, Wales and the Republic of Ireland.